Drumheller’s Town Council approved its Strategic Business Plan at its regular meeting April 7.

    The plan lists the priorities both administration and councillors have committed to working on over the coming months.
    The plan was put together at their retreat February 24 and 25 of this year.
    “It’s a document that we build and council and administration use to identify the priorities we want to focus on for the coming year. It also assigns duties and responsibilities to see them through,” said Councillor Patrick Kolafa.
    “It gives us as council and town administration direction. It’s important to the residents that we have a business plan,” said Councillor Tara McMillan.

Drumheller Town Council listed flood mitigation funding as one of the top five priorities in the Town's 2014 Strategic Business Plan.

    A meeting was held January 20 in Drumheller with the Town and the Province regarding flood mitigation measures.
    The Province hired Stantec Consulting Ltd. to provide an engineering assessment and recommendations for flood mitigation options for the Red Deer River basin.
    Mayor Yemen attended a meeting held by Stantec on April 3, and Stantec has forwarded its review of flood mitigation measures on to the provincial government.
    Stantec’s report hasn’t yet been made public as the Province hasn’t released their findings.
    Work on the tourism levy report is underway, as the Town considers a tourism levy fee, whether it would be implemented, and how it would be collected.
    Drumheller is considering the levy as this would provide stable funding to the Destination Marketing Office (DMO), as opposed to the Town funding the office.
    A meeting date with key stakeholders for this tourism levy is to be scheduled for June.
    With the Badlands Community Facility (BCF), the Town will have to meet the shortfall in funding, as the facility was approved based on fundraising.
    The shortfall is currently around two million dollars.
    Research is being done into the possibilities of whether there are any other funds available to help fund the BCF, either regionally or provincially.
    The Town would commit to the second phase of BCF if funding were available, such as Federal and Provincial grants.
    BCF kicked off its newest fundraising campaign “55 Donors in 55 Days” April 11.
    Aquaplex enhancements include the installation of a waterslide, and the possible addition of a kids pool and application of an anti-slip coating for the pool.
    Funding for the pool enhancements was approved at $500,000 in the Town’s capital budget in March.
    The Town’s target date for completion of improvements at the Aquaplex is September of this year.

    The goal for council is to use the Economic Development Task Force to its complete capacity, so are hammering out some terms of reference to move on economic development goals for the valley.
    Three parts of economic development are listed out - retention, expansion and attraction.
    The strategic report states that a lot of effort is focused on attraction, but that 80 per cent of economic development should be the retention and expansion focus.
    Council's goal is to have the strategy developed by September.

Drumheller firefighters and responders from surrounding areas battled a grass fire near Highway 10 and Highway 873 Tuesday afternoon. The Drumheller Department responded, including the halls in Rosedale and East Coulee, to the blaze on Tom Dooley’s pastureland. Before firefighters arrived, neighbours and oilfield workers in the area battled the flames with spades and brooms.   Support through mutual aid agreements saw Dalum and Homestead fire departments also respond.  Fire in the light, dry grass spread quickly aided by a breeze, consuming a wide swath of land.